WordPress often is targeted by hackers, due to its popularity.

In 2013 a large-scale brute-force attack hit WordPress installations on virtually every host server in existence.

These attacks were caused by networks of infected computers programmed to attack other sites (called “botnets”).

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From A Brute-Force Attack

Brute Force Attacks – Definition

A brute-force attack is a technique used to break an encryption or authentication system by trying all possibilities.

(Source: Chinese University Of Hong Kong)

There are many methods hackers use to try and break into a WordPress site. One of these is by trying to guess the site admin’s login username and password. This can be achieved using software tools and scripts that automatically tries to guess hundreds of possible logins in minutes.

If you’re using obvious usernames and predictable passwords, your site can be an easy target for hacking attempts.

This is called a “brute force” attack.

Botnets – What Are They?

A botnet is a number of Internet-connected computers communicating with other similar machines in an effort to complete repetitive tasks and objectives. This can be as mundane as keeping control of an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel, or it could be used to send spam email or participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks. The word botnet is a combination of the words robot and network.

(Source: Wikipedia)

”Botnets” are networks of private computers that have been infected with malicious software, which can then be controlled remotely as a group, often without the unsuspecting computer owners even being aware that this is taking place.

Botnets are typically used to blast mass spam emails.

The screenshot below was taken from a site that monitors online security showing the locations of the command centers of a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009 called “Zeus” …

(ZeuS is a botnet that has been actively compromising computer networks all around the world since 2009. Image source: SecureList.com)

These ongoing botnet attacks were highly distributed and well organized. Over 90,000 IP addresses were identified by a number of webhosting companies in the initial attack alone, when the web was flooded with millions of attempts to force their way into WordPress user administration areas. The large-scale brute-force attacks then continued, with over 30,000 WordPress sites being hacked each day.

Coverage of this brute force botnet attack was widely reported in all the major webhosting companiesand leading technology media publications, such as Forbes, TechNews Daily, Tech Crunch, PC Magazine, BBC News, and even on the official US Department of Homeland Security website …

(WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS making it a target for hacker attacks)

Does This Mean WordPress Is Not Secure And We Should Stop Using It?

No. In fact, there are lots of very good reasons why you should choose WordPress if you are concerned about the security of your online presence.

To learn what makes WordPress a very secure web platform, read this article: How Secure Is WordPress?

It’s important to understand that, in the case of the large-scale brute force attack described above, was no specific vulnerability in WordPress being exploited (the same script was also targeting sites built using other web platforms like Joomla).

Mike Little, one of the co-founders of WordPress, said this about the brute force attacks:

It is a “simple” script that attempts to login using the admin login and a generated password. So if your password is too short or based on dictionary words it will be guessed and then the script can login legitimately and do whatever it wants including installing scripts (as plugins) or editing files. The attack tries to guess your password, if it succeeds, the most secure site in the world is wide open because they have your password.

(MikeLittle.org)

How To Protect Your WordPress Site From Brute-Force Attacks – 10 Security Checks

Every blog with a vulnerability provides some value opportunity to hackers. A vulnerable site not only provides newbie hackers opportunities to improve their hacking skills and claim “bragging rights” amongst their peers, but it can also be a resource for launching stealth attacks, distributing malware and as a source for creating information theft.

If someone can exploit a way to remotely control your web site, your blog can then be employed to attack larger and more valuable web sites.

Additional undesirable effects of having your site hacked and your site security compromised include being blacklisted by Google, having spammy links promoting things like casinos, cheap offers on brand names, etc. inserted in your content, malicious redirects to phishing sites or other websites, data exfiltration (stealing information or Personal Identifiable Information from your web applications), and lots of other nasty things.

The truth is that software-driven bots are very likely trying to break into your website or blog right now. Whether they can break into your site will depend on how hard or easy you will make things for hackers and botnets to keep trying until they work out a way to get access, or are forced to give up and go look for a more vulnerable target.

How Much Information Are You Broadcasting To Hackers About Your WordPress Site?

Do you own a WordPress site? If so, visit a site like Hackertarget.com and run your website through their WordPress security check …

(WP Security Check Screenshot image: https://hackertarget.com/wordpress-security-scan)

You will see that the scan returns a number of results and details about your website …

(Hackertarget – WP security check results. Product image source: Hackertarget.com)

It should be obvious after using the above tool that if you can access all of this information about your website, so can hackers.

(Product image source: BlogDefender.com)

Being able to see what version of WordPress you are using, which plugins and themes you have installed, and which files have been uploaded to certain directories are all potentially useful information to hackers, as this informs them about any potential holes or weaknesses, especially in older versions.

If your website runs on WordPress and you are not preventive steps to toughen up your site, we can practically guarantee that, at some time in the near future, someone will attempt to hack your site, because these attacks are systematically targeting WordPress sites all the world!

When a site gets broken into, blog owners can find themselves “locked out” of their own site, or notice that their content has been altered or even entirely wiped out. Typically, sites will be infected with malicious scripts or viruses without the owner even being aware of it.

To help avoid the heartache that comes with having your website or blog being hacked into, below are 10 essential and effective security measures that will help to prevent your WordPress site from being brute-force attacked.

Note: Some of the steps shown below require some technical skills to modify core WordPress and server files. If you have no web coding skills, or don’t want to mess around with file code, then ask your web host or a professional WordPress service provider for help.

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Security Measure #1 – Get In Touch With Your Hosting Service

Contact your hosting provider and ask them exactly what security systems are in place to protect your site from botnet attacks, and what is done to ensure that your server files are being regularly backed up.

Make sure that your webhosting service backs up your server files and that, if anything goes wrong, you can quickly and easily recover your site.

Security Measure #2 – Perform Regular WordPress Backups And Keep Your Site Regularly Up-To-Date

Never rely just on your hosting service provider for site backups. Instead, learn how to manage your WordPress site or pay someone to get this done for you and develop a habit of performing a complete WordPress site maintenance routine frequently (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, etc …)

A complete WordPress maintenance routine ensures that:

• All unnecessary data and files are removed,
• All WordPress data and files are free of errors, optimized and backed up,
• All software, plugins and themes are up-to-date,
• etc …

A complete WordPress maintenance routine looks like this …

(Maintaining your WP web site regularly backed up and updated is vitally important for WordPress security. Image source: WPTrainMe.com)

Again, we cannot stress enough how vitally important maintaining your WP site regularly backed up and up-to-date is. WordPress site maintenance is not hard to do or time-consuming, but it must be done to ensure the security of your website or blog. If you do not want to learn how to do WP maintenance yourself, get someone else to do it but make sure it gets done. Backing up your website is the next most important thing you must do after making sure that you are still breathing!

If you don’t want to perform manual backups, there are many free and paid plugins you can use. Learn about a WordPress backup plugin that can fully automate your backup process here: Backup, Duplicate And Protect Your WordPress Site With Backup Creator WP Plugin

Security Measure #3 – Do Not Use “Admin” As Your Username

The mass brute-force attack on WordPress sites was mostly an attempt to compromise website admin panels and gain access to sites by exploiting sites with “admin” as the username.

For reasons of website security, don’t install a WordPress site with the username admin. This is the first area of potential vulnerability hackers will test. If your blog’s user name is admin, change it immediately.

For a detailed step-by-step tutorial on how to change your login username, go here: How To Change Your Admin User Name In WordPress To A Different Username

Security Measure #4 – Avoid Weak Passwords

A “brute force” attack occurs when a malicious script continually and persistently tries to guess the right password and username characters that will unlock your site.

Unless some measure is put into place to stop the brute force attack from happening (see further below for a couple of simple and effective ways to do this), the “bot” will just continue to attack your site until it eventually gets access.

Passwords that are easy to guess, therefore, make really easy targets for attacks. Make sure that you change your password to something that contains at least eight characters long, with both upper and lowercase letters, combined with “special” characters (^%$#&@*).

Roboform is a password management program you can use to create different passwords …

(You can use a password management tool like Roboform to help you generate unbreakable passwords)

We have created a simple step-by-step tutorial that shows you how to change your WordPress password here: Changing The Login Password

Security Measure #5 – Prevent Your wp-config.php File From Being Easily Accessible

The wp-config.php file allows WordPress to communicate with the database to store and retrieve data and is used to define advanced WordPress options.

(wp-config.php)

If hackers break into your WordPress site, they will look for your wp-config.php file, because this is the file that contains important information about your site’s database, security keys, etc. Getting access to this information would allow a hacker to change anything in your database, create a user account, upload files and take control of your site.

To protect your WordPress site from attacks and even being used as part of a bot net, therefore, you must prevent your wp-config.php file from being accessed. This requires knowing how to edit database information, move files around in your server and changing access permissions.

Security Measure #6 – Delete Or Rename Unnecessary Installation Files

Delete or rename the install.php, upgrade.php and readme.html files from your server.

These files are not required after installation. If you don’t want to remove these files, then just rename them.

Security Measure #7 – Keep Your WordPress Files, Themes And Plugins Up-To-Date

Hackers are always on the lookout for vulnerabilities they can exploit in older versions of WordPress, including out-of-date versions of WordPress themes and plugins.

Ensure that all of your WordPress installation files, themes, plugins, etc. are always up to date.

Security Measure #8 – Disable Your WordPress Theme Editor

WordPress installations come with a built-in editor feature that lets you edit plugin and theme code from the dashboard.

In WordPress, you can access the WordPress Theme Editor by selecting Appearance > Editor from your admin menu …

(The WordPress theme editor is accessible via the admin menu)

The WordPress theme editor lets anyone accessing your blog’s admin area view and change your WP theme template files, and create havoc on your site.

To prevent unauthorized people from being able to access the WordPress Theme editor, you will need to disable it. This can be done by editing your wp-config.php file.

Security Measure #9 – Secure The Site’s Uploads Directory

The WordPress “uploads” directory stores all the media files that get uploaded to your website.

By default, this folder is visible to all users online. All someone has to do to see all of the contents stored in your “uploads” directory is visit your directory using their web browser …

(WordPress has an uploads directory where media content is stored)

If any directories in your website have vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers, someone can upload unauthorized file types to your site.

Protecting your directories will prevent unauthorized people from accessing your ‘uploads’ folder and other important directories. This can be done using plugins, setting file permissions, uploading a blank index.php file (this is literally an empty file called “index.php”) to your uploads directory, and so on. Again, it’s best to seek professional help if you are unsure about what to do.

Security Measure #10 – Install Security Plugins

There are several WordPress security plugins available that specifically address most security issues WordPress website owners face, such as preventing unauthorized users from gaining access to vital areas of your site, protecting your files from malicious software, preventing injections of code into files, etc.

Most WordPress plugins address some but not all areas of WordPress security. One plugin that seems to do a comprehensive job of scanning, fixing and preventing issues that could lead to hackers accessing your site files and damaging your site is SecureScanPro.

(SecureScanPro – WP total security software)

SecureScanPro is easy to install and easy to use, and takes care of most of the security issues that WordPress users need to address.

Another great plugin you may want to consider using is BlogDefender.

Blog Defender Security Suite For WordPress

(Blog Defender Security Suite)

This product is a package of WordPress security video tutorials, WordPress plugins and tools, plus a WordPress security PDF/DOC file.

BlogDefender shows you where potential security weaknesses in your WordPress site are …

And lets you fix these quickly, easily and inexpensively …

If you don’t want to purchase a security plugin like SecureScanPro or BlogDefender, you can use various free plugins, such as Limit Login Attempts …

WordPress is a very secure web platform, but neglecting essential maintenance tasks like updating your WordPress software, plugins and WordPress themes, tightening file and data security and taking other necessary precautions can expose your site to attacks by hackers and bots.

No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you cannot afford to ignore the importance of securing your web site.

As a final reminder of the importance of keeping your websites protected, below is the advice given by an expert on website security to all WordPress users after the mass brute-force attacks on WordPress in April 2013 …

Owners of websites based on WordPress CMS must improve at least basic security settings and implement best practices such as the use of robust passwords and the accurate management of “admin” accounts.

Pierluigi Paganini, Chief Information Security Officer, Security Affairs

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As you can see, WordPress security is very important if you run a WordPress site. Hopefully, this information has shown you what to do to prevent brute force attacks on your WordPress site. If you need any further help or assistance with WordPress security, please consult a WordPress security specialist, or search for a professional WordPress service provider in our WordPress Services Directory.

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to WPCompendium.org to receive notifications when we publish new tips on WordPress security and tutorials about new security plugins.

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